The screen writer (June 1947-Mar 1948)

THE SCREEN WRITER Hollywood from being engulfed by the Red Menace. Then he launched into the threadbare theme that the Screen Writers' Guild had been completely captured by Communists who were attempting to warp the thinking of the innocent and unprotected public by coloring what they wrote with propaganda direct from Moscow. He also read some highly laudatory press clippings about himself and Mr. Walsh which limned the pair as honest in soul, pure in heart, high of purpose, and unselfish and noble of spirit. One of the clippings even decried the baseness of anyone who would bring up the indisputable fact that these two are the successors to and former loyal colleagues of the convicted criminals, George Browne and Willie Bioff. The Hearst hubbub about Hollywood's Communists could hardly be regarded as a highlight. It's been going on for years, and although it's been getting even more strident of late, if that is possible, it has the public more or less immunized through sheer boredom with the same old tune. The Reporter has also continued its sharpshooting to the point of absurdity. Then in March of this year Senator Jack B. Tenney presented to the California Legislature a report from his committee's investigation of so-called Un-American Activities, and in seeking a further appropriation to continue his witch-hunt, he named a number of prominent and reputable citizens of the Hollywood film colony as contributors of time and money to a movement to overthrow by force the government of the United States. And, as this is written, necessarily some time before publication, a Congressional subcommittee, headed by Rep. J. Parnell Thomas, is huffing and puffing about the town allegedly gathering data on subversive activities while getting a fine spread of personal publicity in the daily papers. Of course all this is done at the expense of the taxpayers. The junketing Congressmen and their retinue are housed at the Biltmore, eating and drinking their fill on comfortable expense accounts while also drawing their salaries. Meanwhile a former Marine of my acquaintance who returned from the Pacific with a Navy Cross, a Silver Star, and three Purple Hearts, has been living for months in a drafty garage because he can't afford to pay the bonus necessary to rent a decent apartment. These Congressmen have been summoning busy folk to secret sessions from which nothing emerges but lurid puerilities they think will justify their visit here. If some informed, unbiased, and level-headed witness has told the investigators that they are nuts the fact has not been revealed in the local press. Eric Johnston, who certainly is no radical and is in a position to know, has permitted himself to be quoted to the effect that there is no red menace in the film industry. Perhaps he, too, is now suspect for such a statement. So far, Congressman Thomas and his satellites have revealed nothing that couldn't have been found out and forwarded to them by a Western Union messenger boy. If the situation is actually more complex, there are several highly competent and experienced investigators in the Los Angeles office of the FBI, any one of whom could have collected all pertinent facts at no extra cost to the government. But this, of course, would have deprived our visitors of their current fanfare and per diems. The tactics are the same, whether it's a state legislative or a Congressional smelling out of evil. They smear people by innuendo. They rush into print with unsubstantiated charges that would get them punched in the nose if they were acting as private citizens. They hide behind the immunity from libel of their official committees. Hearst and Wilkerson — and it's absurd to mention the latter's puny influence in connection with the former's— have a right to print whatever they please at their own expense as long as they retain their skill in keeping on the safe side of obscenity and libel. But every tax-payer has a right to howl his head off at having public funds frittered away by these politicians seeking self-aggrandizement through their official witch-hunts. The money could and should be much better used doing something for the thousands of veterans in Los Angeles alone who are sleeping in garages, broken down trailers, and often in all-night theaters because they can't even find a bed. The three principal charges hurled at the Screen Writers Guild and the film industry as a whole can be completely dealt with in three short paragraphs. The statement that the Guild is controlled by Communists is palpably a baldfaced lie. The present officers and directors were chosen in an honest, impartially supervised election, in which more members voted than ever before. Emmet Lavery was retained as President because of the dignity and urbanity with which he has conducted Guild affairs in previous terms of office. He happens to be a Democrat and is regarded by the Catholic Church as one of its foremost laymen in America. If he is a Communist then so is the Hc( y Father. Mr. Lavery and the board of directors can take 18